For most of this channel’s existence I’ve worked to remain fairly non-partisan. I’m generally uninterested in the whole performative, substance-free mess of party politics in the United States. I’ve adopted the understandably popular “pox on both their houses” approach. Obama’s foreign policy left plenty for me to bitch about, and it’s easy to cover Trump as if he’s some unique biblical plague, somehow distinct from the party he leads.
But at a certain point you’ve got to acknowledge facts. The Democrats are an uninspiring bunch of managerial, condescending twerps. But if your expectations are low, they can be trusted to be reasonably honest and competent. 20 years, and four disasters have shown us that the Republican party is filled with dangerous anarchists, and even worse, people who pretend to be principled, but are eager to bow down to the dangerous anarchists in charge. This video chronicles the 9-11, Iraq war, 2008, and Coronavirus disasters and the political party that brought them all to us. It also lays out why no other media outlet will talk about this…
I feel like the broader arc of Trump’s Iran policy has been ignored recently. The incredibly flashy and violent gyrations of escalation have gotten a lot of coverage, but there isn’t enough emphasis on why we’re here. Sure, I suppose it’s fun to get bogged down on the question of whether or not assassinating the general of a country we are not at war with is a good idea, but we’re kind of missing the forest for the trees. No matter what you think of the Soleimani killing, we should be more focused on how we got here. And that’s what I try to do today with this video. I attempt to evaluate Trump’s “Maximum Pressure” policy against Iran, and I find it wanting.
With this blog post, I’d like to continue to complain about something I was harping on in today’s video. In our new media era coverage of international news is just abysmal. Because it gets clicks, you can find exhaustive coverage of every new sound bite in the 2020 US presidential election. But when political earthquakes like this happen, we’re reliant on a staggeringly small range of voices. As I mentioned in the video, many of the New York Times stories written on Bolivia are actually produced in Brazil. That may be where their regional headquarters are but in previous eras there would have been actual correspondents on the ground, or at least competent local stringers that the NYT could have been able to rely upon. But instead we’ve got a guy who certainly knows more than I do, but will be writing about Brazil next week, and maybe Uruguay the week after next.
I am kind of hard on the unthinking coverage of the New York Times and the Washington Post in this video, but that doesn’t mean I am against these organizations. In fact, I think you should all subscribe to them. As biased and incomplete as the stories they tell sometimes are, without them we’d be lost. If the opponents of these resources get their way, then all we’d have to go on in Bolivia would be the reports of the Organization of American States, the US State Department, and the triumphant tweets of US senators. As bad as things are now, that would be even worse. In the 1980s the US media effectively blocked some terrible US policies in Latin America. It’s pretty clear that the media no longer has the strength or capacity to do that. That’s pretty sad.
Hey there. Today’s video talks about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the weird way in which she’s helping put forward one of my very conservative priorities… a more powerful Congress. What the video doesn’t get into is the general “socialism” panic, and what I think of her specific policies. I’ll get into that a bit here, but the first thing to remember is that Ocasio-Cortez does not actually have much institutional power. She can put things on the agenda, she can make specific issues or problems a one-day wonder, but as a freshman congresswoman, she doesn’t actually have the ability to do much in the Congress itself.
First off there’s the topic of her socialism, which some report may already be fading out of her messaging. She’s definitely much more left-wing than the US national average, and maintains that “the workers” are her number one priority. She also focuses on a lot of identity politics issues. That makes a ton of sense for a representative of some of the most diverse and left-leaning places in the country. It’s actually kind of surprising that the Bronx and Queens weren’t already represented by a left-wing firebrand. It’s nothing to flip out about.
So keeping in mind the fact that Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t actually have much real power, let’s dive into what little we know about her legislative program. First off is the Green New Deal, an attempt to bundle together some environmental and jobs programs. I’m on record as not caring much about the environment, and being pretty confident that technology would handle the issue. But that was during the Obama years when things were actually moving in a good direction. Trump’s aggressive promotion of industrial dead ends like coal, and insane decision to let everybody else make the rules for the environment while the US sulks at home, make me a lot less calm on this issue. So I’m happy to see more rabble-rousing about it. That said, Ocasio-Cortez will have trouble getting the Green New Deal past the leadership of her own party, let alone past this president.
Second taxes. Honestly her suggestion of a 70% tax rate on those making more than 10 million dollars a year doesn’t go anywhere near far enough. I believe our national debt and annual deficit to be a near existential crisis. It threatens the world as we know it. More taxes are essential. Now, while Ocasio-Cortez might want more taxes, she does not care about the deficit. After decades of being the only ones who actually cared about the national debt, the Democrats are now beginning to take their cue from the Drunken sailor fiscal habits of the Republicans. Under the banner of “Modern Monetary Theory” they are filing in behind Dick Cheney and his famous proclamation that “Deficits Don’t Matter”. Now, I don’t claim to understand money. But I do know some history. The British didn’t think deficits mattered during the world wars either. Then they had to give up their Empire. I think this MMT thing is just an excuse to accelerate us off a cliff. That said, Ocasio-Cortez couldn’t possibly be worse for the public finances than the Republicans have been for the past 40 years.
Third, Identity Politics. Honestly I just love that. Remember, I’m quite possibly the country’s only proud conservative SJW. Her standpoint on abolishing ICE, and reforming policing fits quite well with mine. Also I kind of enjoy all this “sisters of color in power” social media stuff. I don’t find it threatening in the slightest, and those who do should probably engage in some self-reflection on why that is. This is a process as old as time. The history of New York in particular is one of ethnic group after ethnic group coming to power and building fiefs for themselves. It’s a key part to the melting pot and eventual assimilation. One of the tragedies of the 20th century is that the growing power of the federal government, and especially the white suburbs over inner cities, meant that these local positions of power still existed but had lost their significance in most places. Flint, Michigan or Newark, New Jersey can have as many black Mayors as it wants, it’s not going to bring about real changes in power or wealth. The removal of legal bars to success for people of color 50 years ago was a great victory, but the fact that real power was so much further away than it was for earlier Italian and Irish populations kept real progress from being made. This new, dramatically more diverse congress is a long delayed step forward, and it’s going to be great for all of us.
So What, am I a Democrat now?!?! Hell no. But, as I mention in today’s video, I definitely want them to win big in the mid-term elections this November. This may be surprising to some of you. Though I certainly changed my tune in 2016 and became a very reluctant Clinton supporter, long-term viewers know that I’m a pretty hardcore third party guy. In fact I’ve never voted for a Democrat or Republican in a national election. (In 2016 I was registered in Washington, DC, a super Democratic jurisdiction, so my vote didn’t matter). In fact, when I started doing this channel full time in 2014, I intended to use it to agitate for third parties in 2016.
Trump changed my calculus, obviously. I was convinced that Trump posed a unique threat to US politics, and nothing about his presidency has changed that conviction. I’m no Democrat, and it’s hard to imagine my ever becoming one, but Trump makes for strange bedfellows.
And my support for the Democrats this time around is actually quite consistent with my old school Libertarian views. Divided government, one where different parties control different branches, is always better from a Libertarian perspective. It means that less gets done. I’d be perfectly happy for the next two years of Trump’s presidency to be completely gridlocked. It’d be better than what we’ve got now.
Today’s video gets into some very interesting territory that I hope to cover more in future (years?). So much of today’s politics in the United States is rooted in this weird idea of “whiteness” and who is a “good American” and who isn’t. These dumb, dumb conversations are of course as old as our republic. Let’s leave aside the fact that the “realest Americans”, the indigenous, and African Americans (few of whose ancestors were forced here after the early 1800s), are somehow never invited to the party.
What today’s video gets into in a small way, is the role of folks from our last (much larger) wave of immigrants around the beginning of the 20th century. It sometimes seems like it’s the newest members of US “whiteness” that are the most vicious in its defense. I’m thinking specifically of the very Irish Sean Hannity, and the very Italian Jeanine Pirro of Fox News. In a small way, the largely illusory “clash” between Trump and the Establishment is a clash between a fresher 20th century New York, Italo-Irish version of whiteness, and an older version. It’s the Nouveau Riche vs. the folks who never let them into their yacht clubs.
This too is a tale as old as time. I’m not sure if it’s seen as not polite, or just plain not relevant to bring up, but I think it’s worth focusing on a bit. You can’t really understand the silliness of conversations around Latinos and other immigrants without understanding how foreign the Irish, and later the Italians, Slavs and Jews were once seen. This idea of “Real America” or “Whiteness” is becoming more and more of a focus of the Trump administration’s public profile. Today’s pardon of the Hammond family, a goal of domestic white terrorists, is one example. As I’ve said before, Trump’s presidency is almost certainly the dying gasp of an older version of “Real American”. Presidential politics has served this role before, though in a more positive sense. John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960 symbolized the acceptance of Catholics into the US mainstream. It didn’t prompt a Trumpian reaction the way that Obama’s presidency did. But that doesn’t mean that Trump’s version of White supremacy is any less dead than the WASP ascendancy is. Like I said, we’ve seen this story before. A new US identity is already forming. That’s why the “whites” are so pissed. Obama got into the yacht clubs before they did.
Is there a contradiction in the foregoing paragraph? Absolutely. And I think it’s worth exploring further. Someday.
There are a lot of big dumb solutions out there. From a new constitutional convention, to reforming the electoral college, to doing “something” about “money in politics” there are many proposed solutions. I think these solutions make things way too complicated. We’re avoiding a much simpler fix. Give Congress More Money. The writers of the US Constitution thought the US Congress was the most important institution in government. There’s a reason they laid it out in Article 1. It’s the legislature, not the president or the courts that supposed to be doing the governing.
That’s not the way it works today. We are verging on worship of the office of the President, and we let the Judiciary make more and more of our laws. Over the past 22 years we’ve also systematically dismantled and starved the institutions that help our legislature compete. The results have been pretty straightforward. Congress is useless. If we give it some more money, and make it useful again, we may find ourselves with a functioning government again. This video lays out the case.
